They are even regarded as an indicator of infection by HBV (Schaffner et al., 1977) and SIV/HIV (Grimley and Schaff, 1976; Kostianovsky et al., 1987; Lee et al., 1988; Kaup et al., 2005), viruses known to activate the cGAS–STING pathway (Sun et al., 2012; Gao et al., 2013a). The gene discussed is CGAS; the disease is infection.